ABSTRACT
Dickens completed Hard Times in July 1854. By October the familiar symptoms of restlessness which presaged the beginning of a new book were appearing once more:
visions of living for half a year or so, in all sorts of inaccessible places, and opening a new book therein. A floating idea of going up above the snow-line in Switzerland, and living in some astonishing convent, hovers about me. 376
